What Is Enamel Paint?

Enamel paint is formulated for durability to paint surfaces such as chairs, outdoor furniture, molding, trim and doors, and it is available in a water-based formula and an oil-based formula. Choose an enamel paint best suited for the task with advice from a licensed remodeling contractor in this free video on home maintenance.

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Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Tim Gipson, and I'm here to talk to you about what enamel paint is. Now, enamel paint is paint that is formulated for durability. So, you're going to use it on surfaces like chairs, outdoor furniture, molding and trim and doors. So areas that have a tendency to be bumped or kicked, or where you need to have good washability. You know, that's where you're going to find enamel paints. Now enamel paints are formulated, you have water-based enamel paints, and then you have oil-based enamel paints. The water-based are a lot easier to work with. Obviously, they're water clean up. If you use an oil-base, you have to use mineral spirits, paint thinner or something like that to clean up. And, with modern formulations, a lot of your enamels come, they're a hundred percent acrylic-based, which acrylic is a latex or water-based type of formulation. And, one thing that you can get with enamel paints is that they're good to use in moisture areas, prone areas, 'cause most of them come with some kind of mildew resistance that's in with them. And again, they're very durable, and plus you can get good finishes, such as a semi-gloss or a gloss, or even now, with the acrylic formulation, you can get a very high gloss finish. Used to be the high glosses were only...you could only really get a really good high gloss finish with an oil-base. But again, with the acrylic formulations you can get some good enamel that gives you some good gloss finishes. And, enamel is also good to use on metal, and prime metal areas. And most likely if you're painting metal and you're using enamel, it's probably going to be better to use the oil-based product in certain things like that. But on molding and trim and furniture, an acrylic based enamel would work fine. So I'm Tim Gipson with what enamel paint is.